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Thursday, December 13, 2012

John Brooks is one of three Artists of Distinction in Still Point Art Gallery’s current online exhibition: Sacred Time - Sacred Space. His photographs in this exhibition are reflections upon sacred spaces, buildings, and places to which human beings are drawn for prayer, meditation, and contemplation. The images themselves are reverent and respectful depictions of their subjects--masterfully composed and beautifully presented.

Brooks was born in the United Kingdom, and studied A Level Art and History of Building at Bath Technical College. He received his Higher National Certificate in Technical Drawing and Graphic Art. Brooks has been a commercial photographer for historic buildings, a web-designer, freelance photographer, and graphic artist. His work has been shown in over fifteen exhibitions, including in four different Still Point Art Gallery exhibitions.

Brooks studied painting and drawing in college, but eventually came to prefer photography. Early on he used medium and large format cameras. Now he works in digital, but still uses the 5 x 4 plate camera when his work calls for it. But Brooks is unique in that he realizes that a camera is not needed to compose a photograph. He often considers certain compositions over a period of weeks or months before actually committing them to film or memory card.

My work as an artist features the world around us viewed in an alternative way, one that seeks out the extraordinary that lies within the ordinary. I have for many years been inspired by the commonplace object or landscape and the hidden aspects of that subject matter. Without selecting a microcosm of the subject it is still possible to present the viewer with a radically different perspective of the ordinary by drawing their attention to the potential of the subject by virtue of its shape, color, texture, shadows, juxtaposition, or transient condition rendered by human interference.